Politics & Power Quote by Jeff Bingaman

“Historic highs” is doing double duty here: it’s a warning flare and a political alibi. Jeff Bingaman frames energy prices not as a market swing but as a national emergency with a receipt attached. The $40 billion figure is the quote’s keystone. It translates something abstract and diffuse - price volatility, global supply constraints, refinery capacity, geopolitical risk - into a single, graspable hit to “American consumers.” That phrasing matters. Consumers are a sympathetic constituency because they’re everyone, and because consumer pain reads as non-ideological. It shifts the argument away from industry winners and losers and toward household budgets, where outrage is easiest to mobilize.

“Some analysts estimate” is a careful hedge: authoritative enough to sound empirical, deniable enough to survive later revisions. It signals that Bingaman wants the credibility of expertise without being handcuffed to a forecast. Then comes the tonal pivot: “Speaking very frankly.” Politicians deploy frankness the way brands deploy “authenticity” - as a cue that we’re moving from numbers to moral permission. The subtext is legislative urgency: this isn’t merely unfortunate; it justifies intervention.

“We cannot afford this kind of expense” widens the frame from personal inconvenience to collective constraint. It’s less about a single season of high gas prices than about the political cost of letting them persist: inflation anxieties, voter anger, pressure on manufacturing, and a narrative of national vulnerability. The line reads like an opening argument for policy - strategic reserves, efficiency standards, diversification, maybe a push on domestic production - while keeping the prescription offstage until the audience is already nodding.